You can find these rare spawns in locations along the coast in each zone. The Zandalari Warbringers will require a tank or healer, or both, depending on your gear. So far, they are the only ones that actually drop the mount. The Zandalari Scouts can easily be killed with two players, or even soloed depending on your gear and class.

Attack Power gained from Vengeance is now capped at the player's maximum health.

Quests

Commander Oxheart in Townlong Steppes will now sell Crystallized Dread, Crystallized Terror, Crystallized Horror, and Eye of the Black Prince for gold to players that have completed the appropriate quest lines.

Completing "Heart of the Alliance" or "A Gathering Storm" will no longer sometimes cause players to be phased incorrectly.

Whenever a PTR build goes up, we get a flurry of simple questions that we want to address, but that don't feel patch note worthy. We are going to be posting the answers to some of these in this thread.

We're going to leave the thread unlocked. Feel free to leave feedback here, but be aware that this is just a running list of explanations and don't expect a lot of back and forth discussion.

Likewise, you don't need to ask your question here. We'll try and cover anything we see in our forums, other forums, Twitter, etc.

The focus of this thread is on class mechanics and set bonuses. We aren't going to cover e.g. achievements, raid encounters, pet battles, account issues, or GC's favorite cover bands. Likewise, these are simple answers, not "What is your vision for my class?"

We’re still iterating on this design for Wild Mushrooms. Currently, they each absorb 25% overheal, up to a max of 33% of the Druid’s max health (total of 75% / 100% with 3 Mushrooms out). This max size isn’t working in build 16446, but we hope to hotfix that soon. Upon blooming, their accumulated healing is split over the targets they heal. Several parts of this aren’t yet working in build 16446, leading them to be massively overpowered (which we also hope to hotfix soon). Feedback, especially in future builds, is appreciated.

The Fire Mage 4T15 bonus is before Critical Mass. Net increase to your Pyroblast’s crit rate will be +6.5%.

This build included a new version of Blazing Speed. We changed it from the previous build because we thought that it was too strong. This is definitely something we’re still iterating on for 5.2. The new version replaces Blink, but goes farther than Blink (and distance is variable instead of fixed), does not cost a GCD, and provides brief stun and root immunity, and is on a different spell school. Feedback from playing with it is very helpful. We realize that there is somewhat of a conflict here with the PvP Glove bonus, and will resolve that if needed.

Another talent we’re iterating on is Invocation; it’s quite possible that the current version is overpowered, but we’d like people to try it out, and give us feedback about how you use it, especially as Arcane.

The Hunter 2T15 bonus is a chance to summon a Thunderhawk. That Thunderhawk will assist you, and will always cast 5x Lightning Bolts for 16k to 24k Nature damage. Its damage will scale with BM mastery, and will not scale with Survival mastery. However, the proc chances (which are Real PPM) vary by spec: 0.7/min for BM, 1/min for MM, 1.2/min for Surv.

The Hunter 4T15 bonus is affected by Survival’s mastery, cannot trigger Wild Quiver, and procs at a rate of 3 RealPPM.

Storm, Earth, and Fire is a new ability for Windwalkers. It’s intended to be fill the role of attacking 2 or 3 targets. It’s a rather complex ability, technically, and you’re seeing a very early version of it that still has some significant bugs (which we’re hoping to hotfix soon). To give you an idea of the design intent here, the spirits should mirror your damaging attacks against targets other than the one they’re on (so that it’s not a single target DPS gain). The spirits auto attack on their own. It should reduce your and your spirits damage while they’re out, but the exact tuning for that is still being iterated on. They’re currently -40% for 1 (total of 120% of normal against 2 targets), and -55% for 2 (total of 135% against 3 targets). Non-damaging attacks (such as Spear Hand Strike) should not be mirrored, but damaging attacks (such as Fists of Fury) should. Feedback very appreciated.

We are still iterating on Blade Flurry. We feel like the implementation of Blade Flurry on live forces rogues to go Combat on any cleave fights, while leaving Combat too far behind on any single target fights. It's fine if the rogue specs have niches, but the niches shouldn't be so rigid that you don't feel like you have any choice in spec. Blade Flurry will be how Combat does 2-5 target AoE damage. In the next PTR build, it deals 40% of normal damage to up to 4 additional targets, for a 20% energy regen reduction.

The Rogue 2T15 bonus does apply to all finishers with a duration, including Slice and Dice, Kidney Shot, Recuperate, Envenom, and Rupture. In build 16446, the Kidney Shot increase was broken, but is fixed for the next build.

Shadow Priests have raised concerns about both of their T15 bonuses being tied to Shadowy Apparitions. Know that we have improved Shadowy Apparitions. Previously, there was a cap of 4 out at once. In build 16446, that’s raised to 5 if you have 2T15. However in the next build, we just raised the cap to 10, which you should basically never hit. And more importantly, we significantly improved their AI. Please try them out. If they give you problems, please be as specific as possible about those situations.

The Elemental Shaman 2T15 bonus triggers from Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning hits (including Overloads). A Chain Lightning that hits 5 targets has 5 separate chances to trigger the Lightning Strike. If it Overloads, then 10 chances. There is no ICD, so it can proc multiple times from a single Chain Lightning. However, in the next build (or perhaps a hotfix), the damage from the Lightning Strike will be split between affected targets. There is a very high potential impact from this set bonus, so we’re keeping our eye on this, and may have to nerf it. But we’re trying it this way, since it is the most fun version.

Fel Armor has a significant typo in its tooltip; we added the 10% damage reduction and took away the armor. The health and healing received are still increases, not decreases.

The new Glyph of Unstable Affliction reduces the cast time, but does not affect the GCD. Thus, it is not a DPS gain in a purely Patchwerk situation, but makes it harder to be interrupted, and allows you to start moving again slightly faster.

The DPS Death Knight 2T15 bonus has a RealPPM rate of 1.0. The Zandalari spirit it summons has damage and attacks similar to the normal DK Ghoul, benefits from Unholy’s mastery, does not replace your current ghoul, and you can have multiple of them up at once.

While the DPS Death Knight 4T15 bonus (increased Army duration) is on target, performance-wise, in most fights, it’s always challenging to have a set bonus improve a 10min cooldown. We’re considering some additional changes to this, such as also lowering the channel time and / or rune cost. We understand this is a challenging set bonus to design, so we're going to have to iterate on it a bit.

Raid Testing Schedule - January 11

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

On Friday, January 11, we will be testing our first two raid encounters of the 5.2 test cycle.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Public Test Realms.

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. This is particularly true for this test, since it's our first 5.2 raid test. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Important Testing Notes

Q:How do I get into the raid zone?A: At the northeastern edge of the swamp on the Thunder King's island, there is a Shado-Pan camp in a small cave. A sewer grate in this cave will take you directly to the zone-in point for the raid zone. (As more of the island unlocks, players will be able to access the main gate directly.)

Q: What gear do I use to test the raid?A: As we did for Beta raid testing, we will be scaling players' gear inside the raid in order to facilitate testing. Gear will be scaled (up or down, as appropriate) to item Level 502 for the purposes of testing Normal modes.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

PvP Gear FeedbackWhy not add in a reduction in conquest points required to purchase gear as the season progresses? Like a 25 point deduction per week. That way casuals/people re rolling aren't left in the dust mid way through the season.
Stay strong! This is a subject that we've been giving a lot of thought to lately. We'll have more to report in the near future. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Troll Model Feedback
It does look quite nice indeed.

Things like this make me think that they're showing us the new character models in the form of NPCs as they get ready (strangely enough there's no new dwarf model NPC, but ah well).
It guess that our updated NPC models can kind of look like sneaky previews of new character models, but I doubt that this is actually the case. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Burning Crusade Leveling ExperienceLeveling through BC era content makes me want to delete WoW. That is all.
The last time I leveled through the Burning Crusade area, it was relatively fast. That said, we know that for some, this isn't their favorite content. We've even said that if there is a time and a right idea for revamping the experience, we just might. But that could be any time in "the future". (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

10 Man LFR Feedback
25 is a better fit for LFR, most of the reasons have already been said on previous posts. I’m more curious as to why would someone prefer 10-man over 25 in LFR?

If it’s because of performance issues then that’s a totally valid point, but other than that, I can’t see it, except for simple personal "abstract" preference, which is also fair but hard to use as an argument to try to convince devs to spend resources on creating one more difficulty level and adjust/balance LFR for 10man when 25 works just fine. It feels a bit redundant to me.

10man would probably cause higher queues and be less forgiving when raiding with inexperienced players as they would have less “backups” in the same role.

10mans are great when you have a coordinated group. It’s much easier to organize and coordinate 10 people than 25, so it makes a lot of sense for normal/heroics where someone actually has to create a raid by gathering a group of skilled players and still lead them.

But LFR doesn't require much coordination, and the group is automatically generated, so what would the advantages of 10man be? I’ve seen this suggestion before, so I’m really curious about it and not trying to be sarcastic here, maybe someone has a logical argument that I’m just not thinking about.

A lot of people like 10 mans over 25s for the same reason they might like purple and can't stand green. It's just their favourite. It could be because 10s are quieter and cleaner (my preference), because people are more accountable, because there's more of a chance for an individual to shine etc. etc.
That's the kind of answer that I was looking for, when I said abstract, I meant it in a way where you can’t build a logical argument, sometimes you just like something without rationalizing about the reasoning behind it.

When you say “I like purple and can’t stand green” that’s abstract. The only way you can convince someone to adapt the world around that idea is if there’s so many people wanting the same colour that it simply doesn’t matter why they want that colour, numbers matter.

What I was looking for was actually this “10s are quieter and cleaner; people are more accountable; there's more of a chance for an individual to shine”. That’s not abstract, that’s perfectly logical and a good argument, so thanks.

From my experience, healing in a 10-man and in a 25-man settings are really different : you're far more likely to use single-target healing and triage in a 10-man while in a 25-man (especially in a less organized settings like LFR), you'll use far more aoe healing.
That’s true, play styles do change from 25 to 10 man. But I believe that’s something that affects healers the most since you have a fixed number of players that you have to heal. Tanks and damage dealers will probably only slightly change their play style due to bigger aoe packs, which is not constant and affects mostly trash mobs. Still, a valid point and a good argument! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.2 LFR Item Level RequirementSo I can pretty much be guaranteed to get a full set of ilevel 483 in a few runs. But I need ilevel 486 for the next patch, which means I would have to spend valor on pretty much 15 items to upgrade them.
I wouldn't look too much into the ilevel 486 requirement for now. As the PTR is in constant development, things may change before the release of patch 5.2.

Even if it doesn't change, there's level 496 gear available outside of normal raiding which you can get as well, and would help you get to the 486 ilevel requirement. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Cinder Kitten Raises More Than $2.3 Million

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of World of Warcraft players around the world who purchased the Cinder Kitten pet, we’ve raised a total of more than $2.3 million USD to support the American Red Cross’s ongoing Superstorm Sandy relief efforts. In December, we announced that for every Cinder Kitten purchased by December 31, 2012, 100% of the adoption fee would be going to assist victims of this disaster -- and the community embraced this fiery feline in droves, helping out a great cause in the process. Thanks again to everyone who helped make a difference.

WoWDB Addon Data Collection
Finding the drop rate of things like Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn or adding new data from the other Patch 5.2 additions is done with the help of many players. The more people that contribute data, the more accurate and quickly we can update the database.

To help out, just install the WoWDB Profiler addon from Curse and check the box in the Curse Client options as seen below. When you are playing the addon will gather data and save it. When you are done playing, Curse Client will see the game close and upload the collected data from the addon.